Poetry

On the Schuylkill Expressway, in the midst of a snarl of traffic, a truck from N.Y.C. pulled up alongside, with red filigree appearing through a film of grit in swirls like an ice cream sundae: “Coconut Don Fu Delight,” the fading billboard explained, evoking “tasteless bean curd with a white chewy sweetness of caramelized coconut,”…

The gym is closed, locked for the night. Through the windows, a quiet beam from the streetlights lies across center court. The darkness wraps itself around the trophies, lies softly on the coach’s desk, settles in the corners. A few mice scratch under the stands, at the door of the concession booth. The night wind…

Water as green as the pair of pickerel nibbling on the matter raised by my feet. The bottom: mulch, scrap limbs, snowmelt springs, and nothing too large or deep. Drift across, flat on your back, a mote. “One, two, three,” says mother to her boy as she heaves him by his foot over her shoulder,…

She is all definition, the woman, her summer Dress pleated with sweat. In the firm prow of her belly, in the hold Her cargo settles In, as if to stay. When it comes she will be flat Which is herself again, Another. Outside dry grasses nudge each other as if to say Lie still again,…

3. While I was living in Greece, my girlfriend in America had an affair with a Greek boy, a biology student named Vassilis, who was renting a room in the same house as her. Sweet-tempered, flabby, inexpert, he made her feel at ease. He was gone when I got back, but I squeezed it out…

They kill them like flies over there he had slurred on the bus full of drunk marines going back to Las Pulgas. Like flies. Corpsmen, he was talking about. Six months later I was a replacement, saw coffins being loaded onto transports on the airstrip coming in. Lived through the first firefight, the second; had…

Everybody knew what you were going to do before you did it. You couldn’t go out without encountering Some version of yourself, oh, years old You thought you had let go of, Like that narrow hall, the row of frames Contiguous along the wall, you walk down, walk down.             Look, here are crows the…

Duluth, Minnesota Read hawk’s story  ink scrawls Across      a paper sky      the goodbye To time                       A woman Turning through wrinkled Leaves The Wood is in     the Garden Is in      the Wash The wind wraps all of us With winter                       Almost silence Then melts ice into spring Tongues loosen                       She snaps twigs Beneath…

Going south on 91 after a storm, black ice on a bridge. The car skids. Stars above and below, headlights in fog moving down the hill ahead. The grip of tires and pavement and I breathe again. I am like the man who lives beside a stream all his life, and on the day he…